MTV Russia Admits Its Rotten

On September 17, PRAVDA.Ru published article called “Corruption on Russian MTV.” The story was about MTV’s know-how in its Artist & Talent department. Several days later, PRAVDA.Ru asked Vladimir Smirnov, PR-manager of MTV Russia, to comment on the situation. Vladimir Smirnov promised to do so, but it seems that he could not find any arguments against the story by PRAVDA.Ru.

Vladimir Smirnov stated in a conversation with our correspondent that MTV might say something on the subject, but only if all other Russian media outlets paid attention to it. In other words, MTV Russia did not respond (or they did not wish to respond) to our writer’s concerns.

Nevertheless, PRAVDA.Ru believes that the issue of the corruption of one of the major Russian music channels is a very serious for music beginners. Furthermore, the visitors of the site FARK.Com said that the truth was absolutely obvious. That is why we are going to seek official comments from MTV, which claims to be objective and so on and so forth.

MTV Russia is unable to make any comments; therefore, PRAVDA.Ru addresses the MTV corporation with the following questions:

1. Is it legal for MTV to play music videos on the basis of commercial agreements with record companies? Are there any examples of such cooperation?

2. Does MTV use any other criteria for determining the ratings of individual artists?

3. Does MTV-2 use this commercially-based rating practice?

4. Is it common for MTV not to answer questions from media outlets?

PRAVDA.Ru hopes that the MTV administration will be able to answer these questions. In the meantime, we will try to talk to Russian producers about the rating practices of MTV Russia. Otherwise, we will be forced to believe that the MTV corporation confirms the conclusions made by our author.